


Graceless

by sogoldn



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Brief description of injury, Canon-Typical Violence, Carpenter Castiel (Supernatural), Cas Builds Dean a House, Domestic, Domestic Fluff, Fallen Angel Castiel (Supernatural), Fluff, Human Castiel (Supernatural), Love Confessions, M/M, Men of Letters Bunker (Supernatural), Minor Violence, Mixtape, No Smut, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Self-Indulgent, description of injury, sam is barely in this i don't think he even speaks, this is completely unedited rambling, this is the ending i wanted lol
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-28
Updated: 2020-12-28
Packaged: 2021-03-11 04:26:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,912
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28379205
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sogoldn/pseuds/sogoldn
Summary: He didn’t expect Dean to feel so strong, so warm. He didn’t anticipate the shiver that ran over his skin or the warmth that pooled like sun soaked honey in the center of his chest. It took less than a moment for Cas to grip him back, to wrap his arms around him and squeeze with the strength he wanted to, a strength that wouldn’t ever hurt him, would only ever match him because Cas was now fragile but solid. The way that Dean was, always beautiful in his razor thin tightline-walk between complete vulnerability and steely strength. They were equals now, and the thought cut through Cas’ confusion and lit up a jolt in his stomach. He was now a man, and he was beginning to understand that a graceless soul felt love more ravenously than reverently.Castiel is human and heaven and hell have been defeated. Now all that's left is Dean and Cas and the life they build together.
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester
Comments: 3
Kudos: 38





	Graceless

**Author's Note:**

> This is unedited and kinda incoherent but I'm posting it anyways because my 14 year old self would think it was neat.

It was winter, which meant early mornings bathed in silver light, the sun shining distantly like the center of a pearly oister winking from behind a thin veil of white cloud.  
It felt to Castiel that the Earth was still at this hour, blanketed in a dusting of white frost that crunched under his leather work boots.  
He used to wear Dean’s before he got his own, one half size smaller. He hadn’t liked the stiffness of the laces, so he’d switched them out with the soft, worn ones stolen from Dean’s old boots. He looked down at them now and smiled. 

He gripped the handle of his axe through padded work gloves and swung it up and over, feeling the twinge of his shoulder, the pull of its weight as he swung it down to hit its mark. A dull thwack cracked through the still air as the short log split in two and fell on either side of the squat block Cas had sat it on. He placed a half back on the block and raised his axe again. Each hit was well aimed and practiced, his body falling into a steady rhythm with only a little protest from his lower back. 

He thought back to when this body was foreign to him, how strange and claustrophobic it felt to be tethered to tender flesh and sinew, the awkward clunking of it. How it had ached to be spit out from heaven and onto the Earth, cast out without grace and left as a breathing soul in a body, no longer a vessel, but a part of himself he could not escape until Death would take him.  
He had thought he knew pain, the pain of war that stretched out across the cosmos and burned cold with holy fire. There was nothing he could not weather, not the licking flames of the deepest pits of Hell or the divine wrath of his brothers. But he soon realized, alone with warm blood blooming soft purple under his skin, that he had yet to taste true suffering. 

He was human, fragile as a fledgling bird without a nest. He was lost back then, in the truest sense. Not like Lucifer, drunk on ego, or as Cane with rage. Lost as in without home or harbor, newly vulnerable as a fresh lamb thrown to the world without purpose. He was wandering blind through the desert, overwhelmed with the sensations and emotions of his new living form, a mortal form, heaving, messy and graceless. He had not searched for shelter, he dared not hope for it. But of course it found him. 

Dean found him, as he always did, as he always would when Cas was lost. It was only once that Cas had pulled him from damnation, but countless times that Dean had returned the favor.  
So he found him, and his eyes were more vivid because Cas could no longer glimpse his soul through them, but saw only a bright ring of earthly green that seemed to shimmer with recognition, then relief, then concern. Cas had learned that much, had studied Dean’s every changing emotion with all the thorough dedication that a multidimensional celestial being could muster. Which was plenty. So he should not have been startled when he was pulled into a fierce embrace, gripped tight, some might say. But he was, he was startled. 

He didn’t expect Dean to feel so strong, so warm. He didn’t anticipate the shiver that ran over his skin or the warmth that pooled like sun soaked honey in the center of his chest. It took less than a moment for Cas to grip him back, to wrap his arms around him and squeeze with the strength he wanted to, a strength that wouldn’t ever hurt him, would only ever match him because Cas was now fragile but solid. The way that Dean was, always beautiful in his razor thin tightline-walk between complete vulnerability and steely strength. They were equals now, and the thought cut through Cas’ confusion and lit up a jolt in his stomach. He was now a man, and he was beginning to understand that a graceless soul felt love more ravenously than reverently. 

In that moment he realized that the ache he had been carrying since his fall was an ache he had carried for countless millennium, it had a name and that name was loneliness. Loneliness had been bearable when he was a heavenly creature observing from his empty place in the sky, or even as a visitor inhabiting a strange vessel. But with blood in his veins and breath on his lips, it was a hunger. 

So Dean had taken him home, as he always had. There were no more angels, no more demons, only shadows and echoes and the creeping creatures that Sam and Dean used to hunt when they were young.  
The days after Dean rescued him from the trenches of the world and brought him home to the bunker was a time of rest as his father once said. A time of relief. Relief and disbelief and then acceptance and of Cas taking long hot showers and trying snacks Dean brought to him in his newly assigned bedroom. Then Sam helping him pick out new clothes and teaching him how to do laundry, how to properly brush and floss his teeth. Dean started cooking more, then baking and everything was delicious except for coffee no matter what flavored cream Dean added. They took small hunting jobs and when they went out to question locals, Cas was only made to wait in the car half of the time. 

Months went by in which Cas was “adjusting” as Sam put it. They were all adjusting, Cas thought. Adjusting to a world in far less peril than it used to be, a world that wasn’t so heavy on their shoulders. In those months Cas was learning himself as he was in his new form, and learning his hunger. He leaned into it, felt it seering in the back of his throat when Dean held him against a wall in a dark shed, his breath touching Cas’ skin as they waited, stalk still for a werewolf to round the corner. He felt it wash over him like rays or summer sunshine and flip in his belly when Dean let out a loud, full laugh because Cas was so bad at poker and definitely losing all his chocolate chips they were betting over. He felt it pool hot in his lower belly when he would lay awake at night and think about the bow of Dean’s lips, the flutter of his long eyelashes and the shadows they cast over his freckled cheeks. He thought about the stretch of his skin over the muscles of his shoulders, the furrow of his brow when he was reading and the sweat that would drip down to pool in the hollow of his neck an hour into digging up a cursed grave. He thought of the smell of musk and salt that he could almost taste off of Dean when they would get home from a hunt and wonder what it would feel like, taste like, to lap at the juncture of his throat and jaw. 

He had already known that he loved Dean. He had felt it the moment he first glanced mangled soul still steadfastly holding to goodness. From when he touched its divine light that stung with deepest pain and bursting love with a core that somehow held the remains of an innocence most souls abandoned with childhood. Then he hadn’t known it was love, and it took some time after. The realization had trickled in and settled without much protest, into the most intrinsic part of his being. Dean had marked him also, the righteous man with his fierce efficiency and quick tongue and tender, tender heart that let so much out but so little in. 

As a human it was different, less feasible to love Dean from a distance, less bearable to keep letting him bloodlet his nurturing and protection without receiving the same back in the intensity Cas knew he could provide it in.  
It was a need now, now Cas was alive with a beating heart and animal desires. The trouble was that he didn’t know how to start.  
So he began by getting closer to Dean, physically closer, more affectionate. He would lean to let their elbows touch while they read over Men of Letters entries and even hook his chin over Dean’s shoulder when Dean held up something for him to read. He started hugging him in the morning to say hello, which Dean seemed to catch onto fairly quickly. 

“Good morning, sunshine.” He’d say, half smile on and looking at him appraisingly. “I guess human Cas is a morning person.” Cas just smiled and put water on to boil the way he had seen Sam do it. 

Dean was receptive to the physical affection, they had always had a poor concept of personal space. Dean let him brush their shoulders together and linger in hugs and would even lean into him when Cas would sit too close during movie nights at the bunker in an old-time theater room they had discovered in the basement. He didn’t seem to mind Cas borrowing his flannels or sweatpants and didn’t protest when Cas started doing little things for him. Once he felt he had mastered brewing coffee using Sam as a semi unwilling taste tester, he would wake up early and make Dean a cup before he got up. He would wash his laundry with his own and insisted on dressing a wound on Dean’s back after a ghost hunt when Dean struggled to reach it. Everytime Dean seemed either amused or grateful or some endearing mixture of both, all positives in Cas’ mind and each time he made Dean happy it was like a cooling balm to the burning in his chest. 

Later he would realize that the cure for his affliction was to confess. He should have known for how long he had watched humanity, seen them suffer for their silence. And for how long he had watched Dean, up close, seen how it burdened him to never speak on the heaviness of his heart. He thought of how humans had made unburdening a sacred ritual and understood why. He wished to sit at one side of a confessional, in the safety of darkness and comfort of the pungent scent of incense and paint the wicker window with whispered sins, have Dean on the other side in place of a holy man. He didn’t need his message to reach God, he had tried that too many times before and came back an empty chalice. 

So he made a plan, spent many days and nights in restless slumber dreaming about how he would do it. He soon realized there would never be a perfect moment. People were too messy for that. He was too messy for that. The beauty may be in the fact it would never be perfect, just the way that they would never be perfect, a righteous man with a charred soul and a broken fallen angel. So he would gather his courage and breathe through the foreign erratic beating of his heart and only wait for a moment he and Dean could be alone. 

So one night, they were alone. Dean had called Cas into his bedroom one night when he was passing in the hall. His voice had been soft in a way Cas had noticed it being more often, like the banishment of higher evils from the world had blunted some of the sharp tension that often outlined his thoughts and his words. Cas hoped that maybe he had something to do with it too, this subtle softening. 

“Cas, do you have a minute?” Oh how his name sounded in Dean’s mouth. He wished to lap it up off his lips. 

“Yes, Dean.” He replied, abandoning his quest to retrieve a glass of water from the kitchen. He had a more pressing thirst. 

Dean cleared his throat once, gruffly. “You want to come in? I uhm… I made you something.” His voice was still inviting, but hesitant, self continuous. He wasn’t meeting Cas’ eyes. 

Cas stepped in and shut the door quietly behind him. He couldn’t help but smile and revel in the buzzing warmth that overtook him. Dean was standing next to his bed in bare feet and pajama bottoms paired with a well loved band t-shirt that had a neck that was so worn it fell low over Dean’s skin, revealing one of his lovely, golden collarbones in its near entirety. He was turned slightly away and was holding something small in his hands. Cas decided to be brave and sit on the edge of the bed.

Dean turned slowly and then paused. Cas was familiar with this game by then, the tension that would settle heavy in the air, conglomerate like a living entity that held its breath in time to them as they orbited each other carefully, carefully. His lips parted to speak and then closed again. His eyes flicked up and Cas caught his gaze and held it there. Dean licked his lips, pink tongue flashing out once, then sat down next to Cas. It was abrupt and Cas thought it might have been an excuse to break their staring contest. This way he could look down at Cas’ hands as he pressed something rectangular into his palm. 

Cas looked away from the dusting of freckles on Dean’s nose he was admiring to look down at what his lovely Dean had placed in his hand, so careful not to brush their fingers together for too long. Everything between them was measured, had a purpose. Now Cas had to figure out the purpose of this gift, of what Dean was telling him with it that was too heavy to say with words. 

It was a portable cassette player. He knew this because he had seen Dean using one himself. He had a modern phone with music on it, but Dean was a sentimental creature. He liked old things, and he had passed one of these things onto Cas. But it wasn’t Dean’s cassette player, it was shinier and even more vintage. It was black and creamy yellow with a cassette already inside, its brown tape glinting back the warm lamplight of Dean’s bedroom. Cas smiled. Dean had given him “mix tapes” before, but he hadn’t had anyplace besides the car to listen to them. The thought of hearing what Dean wanted to share with him in private gave him a thrill and some other feeling that settled comfortably in his stomach. 

“Thank you, Dean.” He said softly, looking up at the other man with what he hoped was obvious adoration. This was a precious gift, music was something very meaningful, almost sacred to Dean and Cas loved so much that he wanted to show Cas the things he listened to and thought were moving or beautiful. He pictured Dean hearing a song and thinking of him and nearly went dizzy. 

Dean was bobbing his leg nervously and looking back at Cas with an expression that might have been hope or tentative pleasure. “Yeah, you’re welcome, man. I uh, have some headphones for it to.” Dean scrambled to produce headphones from a small drawer in his night stand and handed them to Cas lightly before pulling back his hands and rubbing them harshly over his own thighs as he watched Cas carefully search for the headphone jack and then place them securely over his ears. He could feel Dean watching him intently as he closed his eyes and clicked the play button.  
Cas smiled and laid back on the bed. He knew this song. 

If I could save time in a bottle  
The first thing that I’d like to do  
Is to save every day  
‘Til eternity passes away  
Just to spend them with you

He could feel Dean’s weight shifting on the bed and his gaze on him like a physical touch that made gooseflesh erupt over his skin.

If I could make days last forever  
If words could make wishes come true  
I’d save everyday like  
A treasure and then  
Again I would spend them with you

Cas lifted his hand from where it was resting on his stomach and patted the empty space beside him. Dean hesitated for only a moment before laying down next to him, both with their feet still on the floor. Cas careful took the headphones off and placed them between them, turning up the volume so they could both hear. 

\-- I’ve looked around enough to know  
That you’re the one I want to go through time with

If I had a box just for wishes  
And dreams that had never come true  
The box would be empty  
Except for the memory  
Of how they were answered by you

Cas’ heart felt like it was swelling, filling up and spilling over. He still hadn’t opened his eyes. A part of him didn’t want to, he feared the precious moment could be punctured with a single glance. That Dean would be spooked by their eyes meeting as sometimes was, because he would see how much Cas loved him and suddenly he would be gone. But in that moment he was a solid weight beside Cas, close enough to touch. He was breathing shallowly and was so still, as if poised for something. But what better moment would Cas have? He had promised himself that all he needed was for them to be alone together. And they were alone together. He needed to make his confession, end their careful dance and then ask for forgiveness, if that was what was needed, or (a more hopeful part of himself thought) to be invited in. 

So he opened his eyes and he turned his head and he found Dean watching him as he knew he would. The song was ending and they were breathing so close together. There were flecks of hazel in Dean’s wide green eyes. His brow was pinched, as if it pained him to be so close. 

“Dean?” Cas asked quietly and then let out a wet chuckle as Nights in White Satin began playing over the cassette headphones. 

“Yes?” Dean answered, his voice barely audible. 

“Did you know that I’m in love with you?” So it was out, slipping from his lips easily and washing over the both of them like anointed oil. There was no more heaviness in the air, now it was too light and made Cas’ heart beat quick, as if it were trying to escape his ribcage, run from the finality of what he had confessed. 

Dean’s breath caught in his throat. His brows pulled together more severely. “Cas…” He exhaled as he said it. “Cas…” he said again, closing his eyes.  
The Moody Blues were crooning, ethereal, over the crackling little speakers.

‘Cause I love you  
Yes I love you  
Oh, how I love you

Cas fell asleep in Dean’s bed that night. They touched, in a way Cas had never touched before. They didn’t kiss, there was no meeting of flesh, all that would come later. Later he would know what it felt like to be truly satisfied, to be let in and to be filled up. He would discover the holy sounds Dean made when he was wanting and that he could swallow with his own hot mouth. He would know how the fire in his belly could be stoked into a blaze and then released over Dean’s soft stomach, his strong thighs shaking under Cas’ wide palms. But that night they would sleep and Dean would let Cas hold him and Cas wouldn’t mind that Dean couldn’t say it back yet, because he could feel that it was true and he had a mixtape to prove it.

Months would turn into two years and Cas would let Dean give him his first hair cut and then his second and his third. They would wake together and fall asleep together and wash each other’s backs early in the morning when dawn made the world golden. Sam started coming home to the bunker less after going out for a few drinks with another hunter, Eileen. She was good for him and Cas agreed with Dean when he said he was happy for the both of them. 

Cas would tell Dean he loved him everyday, softly and teasingly and hotly into the line of his throat. After a while Dean started saying it back. 

One morning they were both leaning against the kitchen counter in silence, listening to the sound of the coffee brewing and the first mixtape Dean ever made Cas playing softly, just the two of them in the bunker. Dean had turned to him, his face bathed in morning light and hair mused from sleep and Cas’ own carding fingers.  
“I think I’m happier than I’ve ever been in my life.” He said, smile creeping over his face until it was shining out from his eyes and bathing Cas in the glory of his love. With a swooping feeling of awe and dawning clarity, Castiel realized that the same was true for himself. Of course he knew that he was dizzyingly happy, that he knew a love unknowable to any heavenly body, but he had not until that moment compared his current state to the immeasurable length of his existence. The last two short years had been the most beautiful he had known in all of creation, and it was because of his Dean Winchester. The righteous man, the only man. He closed the distance between them and cupped Dean’s gorgeous face reverently. Because he was allowed to, because Dean should be worshiped, because love should be worshiped, and he kissed him soundly. Dean melted right into him and then rested his cheek against Cas’ shoulder like he belonged there. Cas could feel his grin against his neck and his chest shake with easy laughter. 

Not long after that Dean was injured in a hunt. Cas had no grace, so could not heal him. He had been afraid of this, being faced with Dean’s mortality, the fragility of his flesh. He recovered in the hospital but Cas couldn’t stop seeing the angry red gash in his side, the pallor of his face and the sick sweat on his brow as he held him in the car, hot blood seeping between them from where Dean’s palm was pressed against the wound. He had felt nauseous with fear and later when dean was sent home to recover his hands shook whenever he had to redress the gash, but he insisted on being the one to do it. 

Dean could have died, and that’s when cas decided with a steely surety that it was time for them to make a new life for themselves. There were knew hunters, plenty to take their place. Hadn’t they served long enough? Cas was tired, he was tired of living for others, for serving a greater good. He wanted to live selfishly for once, and above anything else, he wanted to take care of Dean.

Dean did not put up as much of a fight as he thought he would. Cas had turned to him one night in bed (their bed, in the room that used to belong to Dean alone).  
“I can’t do that again, Dean. I won’t. I won’t ever lose you again, not like that.” Dean was silent, still with the fierceness of Cas’ tone.  
“It’s time to stop. The world isn’t ours to save anymore.” They both understood that he meant Sam as well, who had slowed on taking cases considerably and now mostly assisted other hunters with research and was learning more about magic (with much apprehension and some disapproval from Dean). 

Dean was quiet for some time, looking between Cas’ intense eyes before he spoke. “I know.” he said, then let out a heavy breath and rolled onto his back gingerly. “What are we going to do?” He asked, and in that moment Cas could picture him perfectly as a child, wide eyed and with still so much of himself left to discover. 

“I’ve been learning a lot about carpentry in my spare time.” Cas said seriously. Dean laughed. “Don’t laugh, Dean. The greatest among us was a carpenter.”

Dean took his hand in his own and ran his thumb along Cas’ knuckles. “Alright then, big guy. But if you become a carpenter you have to build me a house. With a big kitchen and a fireplace.” His eyes were hooded and there was a smile on his face. Cas knew he was teasing, but he took the request to heart.

So he built them a house. They had decided to move to Washington state, far away from the bad blood of the past the Winchesters left in the south, nothing that far north held any bad memories. Sam helped them swindle their way into purchasing a plot of land outside a small town and near the ocean. Cas got to work immediately, laboring for seven months, as God had labored seven days. He had built something with his own hands, made sure it had a solid foundation and walls that would never cave. He made it in Dean’s holy image, laid love down with every brick and felt the tension in his neck and in his tightly wound shoulders as evidence of his good work. He knew each floorboard and door frame, crafted each room with reverent hands. This place would be safe and it would be warm, and above anything else it would be his and it would be Dean’s.

When all was said and done and Dean was painting their freshly plastered walls a creamy ivory, Cas built their bed frame, made it solid and just the right height for Dean’s knees that were stiff in the morning. He fastened it with a headboard, carved like an old marriage bed, made of heavy, rich oak. Before slotting it together with the rest of the frame, he carved out their names side by side into the sturdy wood, where none would ever see it but he would take comfort in knowing it was there. That something was marked by their love for eachother, a private symbol of unity. 

Their first night in that bed together, their new home warm all around them and smelling of fresh wood and paint, Dean would thank him profusely. He whispered it into the side of his neck and kissed it down his chest. 

Thank you, thank you, thank you, I love you.  
He would carve his words into Cas’ hip with his teeth and then go quiet as he knelt down and took him into his mouth as communion.

Now, they had spent countless nights worshipping, laughing, sleeping, waking, holding, all in their own bed Cas had made for them. Cas rolled his shoulders back and looked up at the sky. Clouds moved lazily over head, a few inky crows passing over the line of his vision. He let himself feel the emotion that swelled up with his reflection. It was contentment. He was happy, satisfied. Even when he was tired, and even when it was too early and too cold out so it made the tip of his nose feel like ice. He didn’t know if there ever existed such a contented and grateful creature. 

Castiel picked his axe up over his shoulder and collected the freshly cut firewood and held it tucked under his arm. He marched up to the house and was greeted by a wiry dog that Dean had brought home one rainy night after he’d almost hit it with the impala. They had every intention of finding its owner, but they never could. So Dean named him Bruce as in Bruce Springsteen and he made a good guard dog for their chickens. Cas nudged the half-latched front door open with his elbow and shut it behind Bruce with his foot. He retired his axe to the side of the door and stuffed his work gloves in his jacket pocket before hanging it on the hook. He scratched the top of Bruce’s head lightly while he unlaced his boots.

The house smelled like frying potatoes and oregano, making Cas’ mouth water. He wandered into their spacious kitchen to find Dean standing over the griddle, bundled in a knit sweater Cas had bought him at a flea market. Dean smiled at him sleepily. “You put the firewood away?”

Cas wrapped his arms around the other man’s middle and kissed the bridge of his nose and then once lightly on the lips. “Yes.” He said, and Dean hummed and held Cas around his shoulders. His beard brushed over the side of Cas’ face as he leaned down to rest his cheek on his shoulder as he often did, nuzzling him like a happy cat.  
“My big strong man.” Dean teased. He smelled like woodsmoke and their lavender scented laundry detergent. Like home. Cas chuckled lightly and kissed at Dean’s hair. 

“I think I’m going to look for our cassette player after breakfast. I’ve been wanting to listen to my old mixtapes.” 

Dean laughed against his shoulder and Cas held onto him a little tighter.

**Author's Note:**

> Feel free to leave a venting comments about the squandered potential of on-screen destiel


End file.
